I was a particular inflexible child.
Aged 15 I decided to do something about it.
It took 10 years before I managed to touch my toes; 9.5 years of them passed before I even took the first step.
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Rigid
I’ve always hated stretching.
When the time came to stretch at school sports I’d skulk at the back of the group, out of sight of the teacher.
In my awkward teenage years this become a problem. 15 years old and I started to get back problems. Something had to change!
But how to go about it?
On paper, it was simple: stretch more!
But in practice? There are hundreds of different stretches. Where to start??
This waylaid me for the next decade. I made absolutely no progress. Until, by complete chance, an unconnected trip to the physio armed me with three simple stretches.
6 months of stretching; job done.
It was as simple as that.
Wasting Time
I fall into this trap weekly whilst running Unplugged.
I spend far more time writing and rewriting to do lists than actually doing the work.
When I get particularly busy the to-do’s pile up. The longer the list, the more I procrastinate.
I forget that all that’s needed is a little action.
It’s as simple as taking the first step; once I overcome the initial resistance the tasks seem to fall away.
Momentum
Perhaps Isaac Newton did know what he was on about after all…
To paraphrase his first law of motion:
An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force.
Likewise a stationary object stays stationary.
Procrastination comes from the perceived pain of a task. When we’re not sure how to get started, the mental anguish required to figure it out stops us from starting.
By getting started we learn it’s not so bad.
For years the cognitive discomfort of figuring out a stretch routine was too much for me. So I never started.
As soon as someone showed me the way, it was a piece of cake.
The trick then, is to get in motion.
Simple.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - Lao Tzu
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